December 2011

2011 was a highly successful year for World Bank blogs; four posts chalked up more than 10,000 views over the year; the year saw the launch of the highly successful Development Impact blog; and two of the Bank’s blogs (Development Impact and Africa Can End Poverty) have featured in Palgrave’s top-50 Economics blogs. The table below lists the top-100 World Bank blog posts of 2011 based on page views over the period November 1, 2010 – November 19, 2011. For those interested, click here to see how the Bank’s 26 English-language blogs compare to one another in terms of the number of posts they have in the top-50, top-100, and top-200. (Keep in mind, however, that Development Impact was running for only part of this period.)

Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and Crowdsourcing—2011 has certainly been the year in which the use of social media and technology has captured the world’s attention. From Tahrir Square in Egypt to the Anna Hazare movement in India, citizens have demonstrated that they want voice and accountability. Innovations in social media, mobile phones and inter-active mapping are powerful tools to mobilize citizens and to provide people with a voice—thus broadening the political debate.

However, key questions remain unanswered: What role can these innovative tools play to encourage governments, donors and foundations to become more transparent, open and accountable? Can the use of social media and cell phones empower people and marginalized communities, and close the feedback loop, allowing citizens to directly report back on project results and participate in decision-making processes about the use of public funds? These are a few issues that emerge when analyzing the potential transformative power of technology on development.

Since 2005 Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs) have received almost half of all net capital inflows to developing countries. Out of $1,130 billion net capital flows to developing countries in 2010, almost 60 percent went to the BRICs.

In analyzing returns to schooling and in evaluating educational policies, ‘soft skills’ – personality traits like conscientiousness, openness and diligence -- often get under-valued or neglected. This is in part because so much value is placed on standardized test scores in education systems. It’s also because soft skills that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains are considered too hard to quantify.

Is open data just a glorified form of publishing or can its benefits go beyond transparency and reusability? How do you take open data beyond the realms of traditional publishers and data sources and spur people affected by the data to participate and contribute new ideas/data about development (and in effect become open data/development partners)?

New content aims to bring app developers and programmers together with the World Bank's open climate data.

On December 2nd, 2011 the World Bank Group announced the launch of a new “Apps for Climate” competition, to discover extraordinary ways to use open climate data. The competition encourages scientists, software developers, development practitioners and others to create applications that use open data to help solve the development problems that climate change poses. It aims to promote innovative use of open climate data – for example, through apps that help understand and manage weather-related disasters, to agriculture, food and water supplies, rising sea levels and other climate related development challenges.

Nobel-winning economist Michael Spence spoke at the World Bank yesterday about how economic convergence between developing and developed countries has been a 100 year-old process, the first half of which is now over, with the global economy now facing significant strains, stresses and challenges. Find out from my interview with him why he thinks globalization and growing interdependence has outrun our governance institutions and learn about what he sees as the most important challenges ahead. The full lecture is also well worth a view.

In July I wrote a post on this blog about coping with information overload using an iPad. Rather to my surprise, a few people actually read it. Four months on I thought I'd share with you some new apps and new uses of old apps. It turns out that four months is a long time in the iPad world right now.

World Bank apps, and apps for World Bankers

Three sets of iPad apps allow you to track what the World Bank is up to. InfoFinder gives you a nice way to search among 120,000 or so documents in the Bank's documents and reports database. DataFinder gets you into the Bank's data vaults and allows you to produce some very pretty charts. There are specialized versions of DataFinder on Africa, Climate Change, and Education. Finally, WB Finances shows you what the Bank is doing in its operational work. You can search for projects via a Google map or via a country listing. This beautifully designed app tells you what each project is about, how much is being lent, and how much has been disbursed. These apps reflect not just the Bank's new openness but also its tech savviness.